The Hidden Letters of Velta B.

by Gina Ochsner

“And it was still dark and with all that rain . . . I didn’t mean, you see.” Mr. Z. worked the band of the hat. “Can I speak with him?”

  Mother glanced over her shoulder toward the back room. Rudy was murmuring the words to an old song—a dirty one, incidentally—while Father intoned passages from Isaiah.

  “It’s not the best of times,” Mother said.

  The hat traveled a slow rotation between Mr. Zetsche’s hands. “Oh. I understand,” he said at last.

  Chapter Twelve

  I’M GLAD TO SEE THAT YOU KEPT records of everything Stanka brought during those difficult days: lemons and ginger root for Rudy and sumac berries for Father. I don’t believe that she’s ever written down any of her home remedies, neither how the herbs and roots and strange lotions were prepared nor in what doses and with what frequency they were to be administered. As you remarked in your Book of Wonder, she delivered her instructions in such a way (Drink this. Do it! Rub this on your chest. Right now; put this under your tongue, but for God’s sake don’t swallow it) that banished any doubt as to their efficacy. And when people are sick, sometimes the best medicine is a strong voice telling them what to do, though I seem to recall your grandfather confiding to Joels that he had liked Stanka better when she had come around only to drink all our milk.

  Stanka also brought the latest reports from the river, all of which you verified. I suppose her accounts of the water moving with such force that it gouged small chunks out of the Riviera’s exposed foundation convinced me to tuck Velta’s letters, your Book of Wonder, and a few photos behind the oven in the hall. It was the highest and driest place I could think of. Dr. N.’s barn was two-thirds underwater. He put a halt to the Joyous Bovines experiment in order to outfit the cows in their buoyancy suits. I know Dr. N. was grateful for your help; not every ten-year-old can slick a small herd in vegetable oil and wriggle them into full-body floatation devices.

  About this time, Joels carried Mr. Ilmyen to our house. And this seemed to revive Father a little. His eyes brightened as Joels deposited Mr. Ilmyen onto the cot next to Father’s bed. The chess set was laid out on the night table wedged in between the cot and the bed.

  Mr. Ilmyen moved a pawn. “Faith is like a marriage. It surprises; it disappoints. Then it surprises again.”

  “No,” Father said. “It is an infection.” Father castled his king.

  Mr. Ilmyen moved a bishop, putting Father into check. “Then may we never recover,” he said softly.

  That night Father called me to his side. You sat on the edge of the bed, your grandfather’s hand in yours. Father pointed to the Bible that lay open at the foot of his bed.

  “Ezekiel. Forty-seven,” he rasped. You read: “And he brought me through the waters; the waters were to the ankles.”

  Father laid a hand on his chest. “The waters are rising inside. Listen.” And you laid your ear to Father’s chest. And then Father recited from Psalms.

  Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul.

  I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing;

  I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me.

  I recognized this one not because I had a memory like Father’s, but because it was one of the strange ones that Grandmother Velta had copied out in her letters. It didn’t seem so strange to me now.

  You kept your ear to Father’s chest. Rain pecked at the roof, made music in the eaves. “It is raining inside this psalm,” Father said. “And you”—he turned his head toward me—“are a girl made of silver strands. And you.” Father turned to Rudy. “You are iron and stone fitly welded. But your true strength . . .” He lifted his finger in Ligita’s direction.

  Then he called Mother. It was hard work for him to breathe. He had to rest in between his words. “Have I done enough?”

  Mother touched his arm so gently it hurt to watch. “You did enough. Rest.”

  Again you bent over Father, pressed your ear to his chest.

  Your ears burned bright red, glowing as you listened to Father laboring for each breath. “Do not be afraid,” you whispered. And then Father was gone.

  That night Joels cut the boards while Rudy supervised from a wooden folding chair. Long shearing wails rose from the skill saw. Joels’s rich baritone filled the spaces in between the passes of the saw. “When all is in the crapper, think of us.” His new jingle for Chem-Do Dry Toilets. By morning, the coffin was ready. Joels and Buber went to the cemetery and dug a hole next to Uncle Maris. They had to work fast. Rain had fallen all night long, and the river had crept up to the edge of our property. When they were done, Joels rang up Vanags, who came around with the Pobeda. They folded down the seats and left the hatch open, and in this way, the car that had previously been an ambulance was now a hearse. Mother, Ligita, you, and I trudged through the mud in our rubber boots. There had not been time enough to chisel a headstone. We’d have to use a simple wooden cross held together with twine.

  Though Father had been a quiet man, he’d made many friends over the years. At the cemetery the widows Sosnovskis and Spassky huddled beneath a yellow umbrella shaped like a tulip. The Lee and Lim families, the Arijisnikovs, the Gipsises, and even the families who had argued most bitterly over where their plots lay came to pay their respects. And Mrs. Ilmyen. She stood by Rudy and me. “Your father solved many difficult mysteries.” Her voice was a low hum, sounding like a wire stretched tightly. “He understood how to live.” Mrs. Ilmyen turned and headed back to the cluster of dark shapes standing just beyond the low stone wall: Big Semyon, Jutta, Little Semyon. This is how we learned that Mr. Ilmyen had also passed in the night.

  Through all this, Stanka watched quietly. I think she was in a state of disbelief. None of her tinctures and lotions had beaten back death. She walked backward around the mound. Three times she did this. Then she took a breath, held it. Then let it out. As she did, her breath was not a sigh but a song.

  Sweet does the wind blow,

  So sweet,

  So sweet,

  From the garden rows.

  It was a Gypsy tune, and Stanka, whose voice usually sounded like gravel being raked with a stick, managed to turn it as soft as a gentle break in the rain. After Stanka had finished, we sang dainas, the old ones we hadn’t sung in years. We knew these words by heart. They were water over rocks. They were breath in the lungs. We sang our love through time and light and momentary trouble. The clouds hung low, bending to our voices. The water rose to our songs. Our songs carried our tears, and our tears unlocked the quiet ruminations of the fields and stones and soil, and of those who lay beneath stone and soil.

  If ever one of us flagged, Rudy raised his crutch, urging us on. You were the only one who did not sing. You were listening. At one point Ligita motioned you over to where she stood. She pointed to her belly. You placed a furry ear on the swell of her stomach; a smile spread across your face.

  “She’s singing,” you said.

  The rain fell flat and heavy. One by one our friends and neighbors dispersed. I did not want to go home. I knew that the mud would be to the top step and the shed was already one meter underwater. Minutes passed. An hour. I did not go to the river; it came to me. I had stood on its banks in sorrow. I had stood on its banks in joy. Now, as it swelled far beyond its banks, it lapped at my feet and I felt divided, confused. We had just sung and it had felt good and right. Now I felt empty, small, and defeated. Over the surface of the floodwater, the storks flew upside down, their reflections shadows wobbling behind them. From the low hills, the dogs barked, but it sounded as if they were swallowing yawns. Only the water from the sky moved as it usually did, rain falling drop by drop, point of proof each. The sky was closing in on us, one liquid bit of pressure at a time.

  Mother joined us, one arm around you, her other arm around my waist. With help from Ligita and Joels, Rudy hobbled through the mud toward the stand of birch. “Our world is so small,” Mother said. “Too small and we are so small in it.”

  “But we’re not invisible,�
�� I said.

  “No. We’re not invisible, just small. Broken but not crushed. So it would be foolish to cry, wouldn’t it?” She pitched her voice toward you, but she was looking at me. A question too burdensome to carry alone. “I have always thought I could draw strength from the river as if I were dipping a bucket in it.” Mother’s gray eyes and the river water one and the same color. “I used to believe that strength would rise and fill me. I’m not sure if I believe that anymore.”

  She gripped me tightly. We were all feeling broken, but the exact shapes of our ragged edges were in no way alike. This is the peculiar thing about sorrow: it is carried differently from person to person. It is unique and therefore uniquely painful.

  The water lapped at our boots; mud crept into my shoes. I was about to suggest we head for higher ground, the hall maybe, when a colossal amount of noise came from upriver. Geese honking, dogs barking, and what sounded like every cow in Latvia bellowing.

  “Ahoy there!” Dr. N., about one hundred meters upriver, waved his arms. He stood on the detached roof of his barn, now a barge held afloat by a thick bottom made of hundreds upon hundreds of wine corks. Beside him, Miss Dzelz held an oar. The barge approached: fifty meters, then twenty-five. He’d tethered his cows to the front and rear. Wearing their bright flotation suits, they bobbed beside the roof like enormous yellow buoys. They seemed to understand how ridiculous their situation was, as their chuffing and snorting tipped from simple confusion to bellows of outrage. The barge gently nuzzled the alders. Then it became wedged tightly against the trees.

  “Be so kind!” Dr. N. called out. “A little push, please. And then hop aboard.”

  The cows tethered to the front of Dr. N.’s floating barn roof lowed and grunted. Ditto for the cows tethered to the back. I looked at Mother. She looked at me. We had two choices: stay where we were and huddle and cling. Or we could step onto the barn roof and head for high ground.

  Mother placed a foot gingerly onto a plank, testing it. “It appears something wonderful can come of lavish drinking,” Mother said, as she stepped aboard. The rest of us followed, the rear brought up by the Ilmyens. Joels and Dr. N. pushed against the alders with their oars and the roof broke free. I’d never seen Dr. N. so jubilant. At last—an experiment with tangible, useful results. We were floating, no doubt about it. And the cows, too. Carried along by the river’s current, they kicked listlessly from time to time with their hooves as they surveyed the passing landscape.

  Dr. N. nudged Joels. “Who would have guessed they’d be such good swimmers?”

  Beside him, Miss Dzelz grinned. Had it not been for the two of them bathing each other in long looks of love, the situation on the barn roof would have been nothing short of awkward. For there, sitting side by side looking small and forlorn, were the Zetsches. Mr. Zetsche was not wearing his elevated shoes. Mrs. Zetsche did not have her many fine things beside her. It was just the two of them. We could not escape them and they could not escape us.

  Mr. Zetsche’s gaze slid over us, paused at Rudy, then dropped. He adjusted his hat so that the brim shielded him from our presence. He hadn’t been with us at Father’s grave; he knew that he wouldn’t have been welcome. It pained me to see how clearly he understood this.

  Carefully, Mother crossed the roof. She made her way to Mrs. Zetsche and sat beside her. For a long moment, neither woman spoke. In the distance we could see the blue and green and red roofs of barns and houses. A flat land of flattened geometries. Small squares of yellow, the light from within the school and the hall, wobbled downriver.

  “Ruined,” Mrs. Zetsche said quietly. “Everything is ruined. The manor house—it’s gone.” Mrs. Zetsche was shivering.

  “I know,” Mother said, as she took off her own coat and gently draped it around Mrs. Zetsche. How quickly this river erased that great rift between those whom we presumed had too much and those whom we presumed were worthy of having more. We were losing everything together, watching it float and bump and knock along the water. Disaster rendering us equal in our losses. We could not look at them or anyone else with envy. And maybe this was the biggest loss of all: who could we blame now for our troubles?

  We drifted past the Arijisnikovs, who sat on their chimney and cheered us on. By this time, the rain had stopped, the clouds had lifted. The darkness above smeared with the dark water. Then lights. Stars. Stars wobbled in the sky; stars wobbled on the inky surface of the water. I had something like a vision then, or maybe it was just a glimpse of insight beyond my ordinary understanding. For a glorious three and a half minutes I apprehended what this all meant. We were collectively being baptized. We were floating above and beyond our ordinary longings, our ugly mistakes, our complicated history. It was all for this moment. And I would be the woman I had always wanted to be: wise beyond my years, sturdy and useful in a way that far surpassed the mere physical limits of my body. Mother would not be weary. Rudy would not be angry. And Ligita. She would have her child, who would be healthy, who would call her mother, who would look upon her with the eyes of love. And you would, at last, have a world worth listening to.

  As though you could hear my thoughts, my deepest hopes, you dipped an ear into the water. Could you hear Mr. Zetsche’s stallions thundering along the riverbed? Perhaps you were listening to his fine cars, waterlogged and settling into the soft river bottom. Velta’s piano played now by pike and eels sliding their bodies over the strings, maybe you heard that, too. Lighter objects—mateless shoes, chessmen, cell phones—they made no noise at all as they swirled merrily downriver.

  Ligita sat beside Rudy, her face drawn. She gripped his hand, squeezed it tightly. A contraction. That is when the barge bumped none too gently into the hall. Ligita clutched her stomach. “Uh-oh,” she said.

  What happened in the hall? It may seem odd to tell you things you witnessed. But sometimes we can look at a thing and not really know what it is we are seeing. Remember the rocks that harbor galaxies of stars? We can participate in their making and not even know it. The cows, as you may recall, clustered outside the hall, pressing their forlorn snouts against the windowpanes, fogging them with their collective snorts and sighs. Their snug chartreuse buoyancy suits, comfortable enough in water, added girth they could not quite account for nor accommodate. With each attempt to sidle alongside one another or squeeze through the narrow hall door, they bounced and toppled ridiculously.

  Ligita’s water broke. Her shouts, as sharp as corrugated metal, punctured the close air of the hall. Mrs. Ilmyen, Jutta, Big Semyon, and Little Semyon murmured their prayers, a rustling hush from the far end of the hall. Mother and I held Ligita’s hand.

  Rudy whispered into her ear, “You’re doing brilliantly.” Her pain amplified his; he pounded his fist into his thigh in a series of dull thuds that sounded, you wrote, like a weaver’s shuttle thudding across a loom. Every thud was another beat to that measure of his tuneless song.

  Mr. Zetsche, who had not said a word all this time, approached Rudy cautiously. In his hand he held an unlit cigar. He cut the nib. “It’s not much, but believe me when I say this: it is all I have.” Mr. Zetsche offered Rudy the cigar. With a trembling hand, Rudy took it while Mr. Zetsche struck a match and held the light as Rudy coaxed the flame, his cheeks working like the leathery folds of a fireside bellows.

  Around hour eleven we grew restless. Joels had gone out and milked the cows, no easy feat as they were still fitted in their flotation suits. The Zetsches had drunk their way through an entire tureen of coffee. We had memorized one another’s faces. There was no electricity, just the carbide lamps and their sharp smell and garish light.

  “What will we do if the water keeps rising?” Mrs. Ilmyen wondered aloud.

  “We’ll sing,” Joels murmured, and Stanka concurred with a bobbing of her head.

  “We sang already,” Big Semyon reminded us.

  “We could pray,” Jutta said.

  “It can’t hurt.” This from Miss Dzelz.

  “All right,” Mother sighed. “But p
lease—none of those long-winded Lutheran prayers.”

  And through it all, Velta watched in silence. Sky hanging over her head, clouds at her breast: milk of heaven. Her mouth pressed tightly. Not from anger. Not from resignation. But from recognition. When your life has been as full as mine, who needs words? Father had said this and she was saying it now. We needed this new life, loud and boisterous and messy, as much as we needed our old lives set in tidy words, written on musical scores, and etched on our faces. See how quickly this all changes, her eyes said. See what a little water can do.

  A cry. Low and long. And then another cry. High and jagged. The baby was here.

  The river shrank, leaving behind a thick layer of marl, river mud, grass, and ruined heirlooms. You helped the men dredge the river and wrote of their curious retrievals: Mother’s typewriter, a wooden spinning wheel, two of Mr. Z.’s stallions. The other three had sunk to their withers in the soft river bottom and there they would have to stay. Mr. Zetsche, it turned out, wasn’t kidding when he said all was lost. Their mansion, once so grand and stately, sat reeking and gutted. And this made an occasion for a sort of healing. You heard Mrs. Z.’s almost imperceptible sniffles; you suggested we build their house first. Joels agreed, and he and Rudy went door-to-door collecting volunteer labor.

  Young men, old men. Rudy’s mates, the Merry Afflictions. Little Semyon. They gathered on a plot behind the hall, the highest elevation in town. One wheelbarrow of concrete at a time—mixed by hand and wheeled by hand amid dew, rain, and dusk—the new minimansion took shape. Smaller than their previous home, this newer one did not have as many shiny porcelains. But it was what we could build and it was what they needed.

  Were some of those young men the same ones who’d thrown bricks through the windows, set fire to the Riviera’s shops? No one asked; no one needed to ask. This was the water’s reckoning, calling us to account. This was forgiveness worked out one stone at a time.